Sunday 15 December 2019

BRAIN WARS

























Rural Wisconsin is an odd place for the murderous spirit of a long dead Samurai to hang out, but I've watched so many horror films my disbelief has not just been suspended, it's been rescinded from lack of use. Blood Beat is low key and cheap (hurrah!), and trundles along on angry psychic energy as, hung on the avenging samurai stuff coat hook, is the story of a dysfunctional extended family who all seem to have latent extrasensory powers, some more latent than others. 

It gets a billion bonus points for its primitive synth soundtrack and panoply of felt tipped on visual effects, including the classic mind laser jazz hands. Seriously, it's like they made this film just for me. I thank the film makers for their thoughtfulness and the awesome Hellfire Video Club for drawing this to my attention. 

Wednesday 27 November 2019

DAUGHTERS OF FIRE





















Duelle (1976) is a curious, compelling film in which the glamorous Queen of the Night and the elegant Queen of the Sun search for a magical diamond, possession of which will allow them to stay on Earth indefinitely. Lest you think it all sounds a bit Harry Potter, it's actually much more like a film noir, in which the almost exclusively female characters traipse about an after hours Paris like sleepwalkers, having enigmatic conversations in cheap motels and seedy dance halls, or in front of a horrified looking turtle in a deserted aquarium

Director Jacques Rivette avoids the easy at every turn, eschewing both realism and fantasy and instead allowing the actors to improvise and the bones of the script to expand and contract at will, giving the film a sometimes stilted, sometimes exciting meta-theatricality that both draws attention to and obscures its purpose. His visual style recalls silent movies, consisting mainly of long take tableau shots that sometimes feels like a test of endurance, especially as they are often accompanied by loud and annoying ragtime piano. Now and again, something mystical and unexpected happens, and the film sparks and spikes wildly into vibrant life 

Duelle was originally part of a much bigger concept: Filles De Feu, a quadrilogy of  films that would be made together and released simultaneously, each linked by a loose overarching narrative but of a different genre. Two films into the project, however, Rivette was overcome by the magnitude of his ambition, and had a nervous breakdown. When the still fragile director tentatively returned to work over a year later, Filles de Feu had been shelved, and Duelle slunk out to a very limited release and even less acclaim. 

Before ending, it's worth noting that the only other completed film in the sequence, Noroit, didn't get a contemporary release at all, although it is now available on various modern formats. For your information, it's a pirate revenge drama starring Geraldine Chaplin and Bernadette Lafont. We'll come back to that, as it quite obviously deserves its own entry. 

Thursday 21 November 2019

THE FUTURE, 1985




 I like everything about this video, apart from the fact that it isn't two hours long.

Tuesday 12 November 2019

KIRK MITCHUM







































Kirk Mitchum (1917-2006) pictured here as rootin' tootin' gunslinging Jed MacLaine in The Cowpoke (1950).

Friday 8 November 2019

REPLACE IN THIS ENVELOPE IMMEDIATELY AFTER USE





















































Maybe it's age, maybe it's depression, maybe it's the realisation than real life never measures up to facsimile but, these days, I'd rather listen to a record of Foreign Traffic than actually go out into the world, and hear it for myself. These 45 rpm records are so beautifully utilitarian, but also genuinely beautiful, The blank verse of the titles is literally one of my favourite things and, yes, I do know what 'literally' means.

These records will outlive us all so rejoice that they exist. Without them, how would whoever discovers our bones at the wheels of our rusty cars in weed infested supermarket car parks know what cash registers, atomic power stations and 450 Budgerigars & Canaries in a show (not pictured) once sounded like? The sinister wind will still be audible, no doubt.

Monday 4 November 2019

NO, I'LL DIE WITH YOU!

























From Triumph of the Champions of Justice (1974) AKA Blue Demon Straight Up Murders Two Alien Dwarves Who Tried To Take Over The World Whilst Masquerading As Circus Performers.

Saturday 2 November 2019

ONE OF THOSE DAYS / NIGHTS
























From Santo Versus The Vampire Women (1962) AKA Religious Civic Art Makes Mexican Dracula Faint, Die and Finally Catch Fire.

Wednesday 30 October 2019

THE WANT OF A NAIL



 





Nail Gun Massacre, d. Terry Lofton and Bill Leslie (1985)

Martin Scorsese recently opined that Marvel Universe movies were ‘not cinema’. He’s right on his own terms, but he’s also dead wrong. Like most highly technical processes, Cinema grew out of commerce rather than art. Early films are all spectacle: look, there’s a train; look, there’s the sea; look, there’s people leaving a factory. As you might expect, this quickly found its way into sideshows and fairgrounds, pop up cinemas with a mission to enthrall and entertain in exchange for cold, hard cash. The first few years of film is all about the novelty of moving pictures, about capturing landscapes, faces and, then, jokes and stunts and condensed adaptations of popular stories and historical events. It’s to this tradition that the Marvel Universe belongs and as such, it could be argued it represents pure, raw cinema: it mesmerises by kinetic action and light and movement – it enthralls and entertains.    

Scorsese’s argument seems to centre around Cinema as an art form, the use of the medium by auteurs who are able to use it as an instrument of personal (or universal) expression. This makes sense, and we can all reference a number of deeply profound films that really say something about the human experience or, at least, say something to us. But not all films are like this, and not all films need to be. Scorcese has made some fairly unprofound films, and Francis Ford Coppola (who also waded into the argument) hasn’t made anything of any note since 1982. Dismissing populist cinema is like dismissing popular music: it misses the point, especially as great pop and great pop cinema can also be great art, not only on their own terms, but in general.  

I’m happy to live in a world that encompasses both the popular and the artistic and all points between, and I don’t rate one higher than the other. Film is like music, like art, like soap: use it for what you need, get from it what you will. Which brings us to Nail Gun Massacre, a film that harks back to the early, primitive days of cinema. In it, a disguised figure massacres people - with a nail gun. This happens perhaps 15 times, and doesn’t get old at all. The victims aren’t really victims, but construction workers who raped a young woman, i.e. scumbags who need nailing to trees, to walls, to roads. But the killer deviates from his revenge to also kill passers by, including young women who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which seems counterproductive enough to skew the message completely but, hey, this is a film about a nail gun massacre, so perhaps I’m getting a little too Scorsese on it.         
  
This film works only as spectacle. Characters are very briefly introduced, and, before we get to know their names and their motivation, a wraith like figure, identity obscured, kills them with a nail gun, makes some execrable pun and then makes their escape. Cut to the next character(s), and the next killing. When a death free patch of ten minutes or so emerges later in the narrative, they fill it with nothing, culminating in a sex scene. These people aren’t interested in characterisation, in narrative, even in atmosphere or tension, they just want to show people being massacred with a nail gun. In this sense, the film is an enormous success. Is it cinema? It’s more than that, it’s the distilled essence of cinema, loaded into an pneumatic industrial tool and fired at the viewer at 24 frames and 5 nails per second.

Thursday 17 October 2019

SINISTER NEW AGE DOINGS









Die Totale Therapied. Christian Frosch (1996)


A slightly manic tale of what happens when a murderous psychopath joins a a therapy group, this film combines two of my favourite cinematic things: sinister New Age doings and murder. I wouldn't say it's a classic, but it feels great or, rather, it has a great feel. Features meditation and squabbling, often at the same time.